


Just A Little Shard of Light

by th3rm0pyl43



Category: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Genre: Assassination, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Primus Adam Jensen, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:15:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23484436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th3rm0pyl43/pseuds/th3rm0pyl43
Summary: He hadn't struck his target's heart, but the Illuminati's would bleed.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	Just A Little Shard of Light

Security was... not as much of a problem as it would've been when Adam had entered the mansion. 

He had approached from above, dropping out of the sky until he was a hundred feet away from the roof, then had the _Icarus_ halt his fall and have him disappear in a brief flash of golden lightning dispersing as quickly as it had come into existence.   
Then, descending slowly under the cover of the pale moon setting, cloaked, using those few minutes to scan the roof and look for viable entry points.

A well-hidden but completely unsecured hatch had led into hallways once meant for servants, through which Adam had made his way right to the primary security center. Cameras had kept an eye on every corner of the room, but the four guards inside were all halfway asleep nearing the end of their shift, so the quick and dirty hack into the cameras first and the computers second went smooth as butter.

While the virus planted by the MHDX-1080 shredded its way through the computer systems, cleverly disguised as a cyber-attack from the outside, Adam stalked his target as the man moved from room to room, refusing to _sit the fuck still_. He was patient, very patient when he wanted to be, but at the same time a frustrating thought gnawed at him. _Early riser, sure, but that must've been one hell of a caffeine overdose to make him run around like this at three in the fucking morning. Is he expecting something?_

The virus was discreet enough to not cause a ruckus through turrets, and the goons in the security center were snoring by now, as Adam could tell when he focused his hearing. So there had to be something else making the target walk so aimlessly throughout the entire place.

Gnashing his teeth as the man left the same living room for the third time within twenty minutes, Adam repressed the urge to punch the mounted deer head hanging on the wall next to him, and climbed back up the wall, tiny wisps of energy fizzling where his palms and boots touched the luxurious wallpaper.

Soon a small message in the corner of his HUD informed Adam of a disturbance. Nothing critical like the alarm being tripped, rather something inconsequential but no less noteworthy. Focusing his hearing to the source, he listened in.

"...true, man, all that shit was true! I saw lights, nobody was around... he told us this bloody place was haunted!"

"Calm down! Whart sort of lights?"

"Well, kind of like lightning, I don't know. Little zaps like broken machinery, moving up the wall like climbing. I swear I saw the air moving too. It's the ghost, I tell you."

Adam had to bite back a snicker at how thoroughly spooked that guardsman was. He supposed he was lucky the one who saw him didn't think of that strange sight being exactly what an active cloaking system looked like.

Finally, after seventeen more minutes, the target settled down in a large armchair, a glass of whiskey in hand. He took a generous swig of the drink, then leaned back and closed his eyes to rest. Perfect.

With feline grace, Adam left his upside-down perch on the ceiling and silently climbed downward on the wall, Smart Vision reporting no traps or surveillance in this room, and not even loose floor panels that might make unnecessary noise. The dim candlelight shimmered ever so slightly through his cloaked form as he approached with hardly a sound, the silence disturbed only by the slight _click_ of one forearm rearranging and the cloak field disengaging.

The man opened his eyes -

His chair made more noise than he did when an ebony nanoblade was rammed deep into the center of his throat with savage force.

Pinned to the backrest, spinal cord severed precisely beneath the fifth vertebra, he would remain conscious just long enough to register sight and sound. His mouth dropped open as he lifted his glassy gaze to behold his reaper.

Carbon and metal black as midnight, gleaming with a strange, chilling beauty in the candles' faint light. An iron mask for an expression on a face he knew far too well. Dimly glowing viridian irises brimming with limitless fury.

"Patient X sends his regards," Adam hissed, the blade too smooth to make a mess when he pulled it back out. He almost wished it wasn't.

The man's lips twitched as if to reply, then his head tipped slightly to one side and he went still. Blood began to emerge slowly from the razor-thin stab wound and dripped down his spindly throat while Adam allowed that tidal wave of vindication to engulf him for just a moment. The tension faded from his body as the man's life did, and he felt oddly at peace when he reached into a pouch and pulled out a small flash drive, dropping it in the breast pocket of the man's shirt. 

The blade retracted, disassembled on a molecular level back into a unit of nano-ceramic ammunition, and one of its little helper systems set to scrubbing it free of what little organic material might've remained on the blade.

Adam left the same way he'd come. The security goons still were none the wiser, the ghost story dismissed as humbug, and none of the ones having a smoke on the roof thought to look up either when he took to the sky in a burst of silent golden lightning. 

He hadn't struck his target's heart, but the Illuminati's would bleed.


End file.
